This book offers an abundance of newly translated essays by the author that demonstrate a heretofore unknown side of her political philosophy. The book documents and contextualizes the author’s ...
More

This book offers an abundance of newly translated essays by the author that demonstrate a heretofore unknown side of her political philosophy. The book documents and contextualizes the author’s thinking, writing, public statements, and activities in the services of causes like French divorce law reform and the rights of women in the Iranian Revolution. It traces nearly three decades of her leftist political engagement, from exposés of conditions in fascist Spain and Portugal in 1945 and hard-hitting attacks on right-wing French intellectuals in the 1950s, to the 1962 defense of an Algerian freedom fighter, Djamila Boupacha, and a 1975 article arguing for what is now called the “two-state solution” in Israel. Together these texts prefigure the author’s later feminist activism and provide a new interpretive context for reading her multi-volume autobiography, while also shedding new light on French intellectual history during the turbulent era of decolonization. The book provides new insights into the author’s complex thinking and illuminates her historic role in linking the movements for sexual freedom, sexual equality, homosexual rights, and women’s rights in France.Less

Political Writings

Simone de Beauvoir

Published in print: 2012-07-15

This book offers an abundance of newly translated essays by the author that demonstrate a heretofore unknown side of her political philosophy. The book documents and contextualizes the author’s thinking, writing, public statements, and activities in the services of causes like French divorce law reform and the rights of women in the Iranian Revolution. It traces nearly three decades of her leftist political engagement, from exposés of conditions in fascist Spain and Portugal in 1945 and hard-hitting attacks on right-wing French intellectuals in the 1950s, to the 1962 defense of an Algerian freedom fighter, Djamila Boupacha, and a 1975 article arguing for what is now called the “two-state solution” in Israel. Together these texts prefigure the author’s later feminist activism and provide a new interpretive context for reading her multi-volume autobiography, while also shedding new light on French intellectual history during the turbulent era of decolonization. The book provides new insights into the author’s complex thinking and illuminates her historic role in linking the movements for sexual freedom, sexual equality, homosexual rights, and women’s rights in France.